When I was a boy I walked a mile to school every day.
Often, the ‘action’ described by the past simple tense interrupts the ‘situation’ described by the past continuous tense
With most verbs the past tense is formed by adding -ed
to show that something continued for some time
I lived abroad for ten years.
for something that was happening again and again:
Did she play tennis when she was younger?
My head was aching.
call >> called; like >> liked; want >> wanted; work >> worked
The most common use of the past continuous tense is to talk about something that was happening around a particular time in the past
we often use phrases with ago with the past tense
We often use the past continuous and the past simple tense together. When this happens, the past continuous describes a longer, ‘background’ action or situation and the past simple describes the action or events.
for something that happened before and after a particular time
Did you live abroad?
something that was true for some time in the past
for something which continued before and after another action
I was practising every day, three times a day.
But there are a lot of irregular past tenses in English. Here are the most common irregular verbs in English, with their past tenses:
something that happened once in the past
The children were growing up quickly.
something that happened again and again in the past
